Blade Over Magic

Misdirection

’Phew.’ Xander exhaled as he felt the adrenaline start to fade from his body.

Luckily, due to having his stamina raised to the extreme due to mana breathing training, as he hadn’t used much magic throughout the entire ordeal, he was only a bit tired and needed to catch his breath. Once he did, he made his way back to the outpost.

When he passed through the gates, he was immediately met with the soldiers all staring at him with varying degrees of shock and awe.

’You just had to go and show off, huh?’ Falael’s voice came through the link, and Xander just gave a mental shrug.

’I was told to clear out as many as I could, so I did just that.’ He answered like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

’Maybe, but I think some people are going to start idolizing you. Though, it kinda makes sense, given how you just performed.’ Curtis chimed in, sounding a bit happy. The larger boy fell in step with Xander while Falael watched them from the mage tower.

’I guess.’ Xander sighed as he made his way to the baths. He was covered in demonic ant blood and sweat, so he reeked.

Curtis left him to clean himself, and Xander entered the public bath which ended up being empty because, well, he was the only one who’d worked up a sweat and gotten dirty.

Pouring the water over his body, he began to think back to the battle.

’This was just a probe by them.’ He noted, his mind spinning. There wasn’t anything particularly noteworthy about the ants he fought. Moreover, the numbers they unleashed compared to the numbers they actually had was massively different. So it wasn’t hard to guess that the fight today wasn’t even noteworthy to them.

’Most likely, they are gathering information. I wouldn’t be surprised if, starting by tomorrow, we start seeing specialized castes made to counter the things we’d thrown at them today. Heck, I won’t be surprised if they send something meant to counter me specifically.’ This thought hadn’t been private as he directed it towards Aubrey, her channel of the link always available.

’You seem to hold their intelligence in high regard.’ Aubrey noted, and Xander nodded.

’They were smart enough to bide their time and allow themselves to develop over the years when they realized that they weren’t going to get jumped any time soon. And you saw it yourself just how organized they were when we infiltrated. Normal ants are already much more organized than other species. Now that these ants have been corrupted by demonic energy and gotten larger, it’s not hard to guess that their brains followed suit. So even if not the workers and soldiers, the queens definitely.’ He started to wipe his face.

’That’s under the assumption that the queens can manually see what the ants see. Otherwise, seeing as we killed all of the ones that attacked, there’s no way for them to relay that information to their queens. But it would make sense that they were some sort of hivemind, which let them communicate remotely.’ Aubrey mused thoughtfully, and Xander nodded in agreement.

As he started putting on a set of fresh clothes, Aubrey spoke again.

’In that case, it will be in our favor to killed them as quickly as possible whenever they come through, to avoid them from grasping much information.’ However, Xander shook his head.

’Our job is to stall, not win. And in the first place, stalling is already a shaky plan.’

’How so?’

’Think about it, the ants have us beat completely in numbers. Looking at it objectively, if they decided to just rush us completely, disregarding possible losses, I don’t predict we could last more than an hour. The whole reason they came out is because of a food shortage, but they can’t risk going all out just yet because they don’t know everything we have our disposal just yet. For all they know, we have a special tool that allows us to take out the queens swiftly in quick succession and are just waiting for them to commit to an all out attack. Every new wave of attacks will test us in different ways, but at the same time, that puts them on a timer, as once their food supply runs out entirely, their hand will be forced.

In short, the longer we stall, the more we run the risk of them just getting tired and rushing us. But if we kill them too fast, they will rush us regardless. So we have to find a very iffy equilibrium.’ As he put on some clean clothes, he added.

’That said, seeing as they can just eat the bodies of their dead to temporarily sustain themselves, I suspect that we shouldn’t be immediately worried about that, at least at the moment.’ However, when he said that, Aubrey’s response caused him to pause slightly.

’Eat their dead?’ She sounded confused.

Xander fixed his sword around his waist.

’Yeah. If ants face food shortages, they eat the bodies of their fallen comrades. The workers should have come to gather the bodies of the soldiers we all killed by now.’ He explained, however...

’That’s... Xander, all the corpses are still there. Not a single ant has come out since the battle ended.’ Xander stopped walking, his brows furrowing.

’... What?’

’Since the fight ended. The corpses are in the same position they were. No ant has come to retrieve their bodies. Do ants typically do things like that?’ Hearing her question, Xander suddnely had a bad feeling.

His steps sped up as he quickly made his way to the wall.

’Xander, what’s wrong?’ Seeing his brisk pace, Curtis, who had been waiting outside the bath, immediately asked with some concern.

Xander didn’t immediately reply as his thoughts spun.

’When ants die, they aren’t just left behind by their comrades. Their bodies are usually dragged away by workers to dispose of them for hygienic purposes. But if they are facing food shortages, they will absolutely resort to cannibalism.’ He soon reached the wall and leapt, reaching the top in one go and landing.

He immediately looked forward, and just as Aubrey said, the corpses were in the same position as before, not a single worker ant in sight.

’Something’s wrong.’ Xander rubbed his chin, and seeing him like this, Curtis and Falael, who’d followed him after sensing the abnormality, fell silent, as they knew not to interrupt his thoughts when he got like this.

’Think. Ants retrieve the corpses of their dead regardless of the outcome of a battle. This is either to dispose of them and avoid the outbreak of diseases, or to eat due to a food shortage. They are experiencing the latter, so they have no reason not to retrieve the corpses. If they don’t do so, the corpses run the risk of developing diseases... wait.’ At that moment, Xander suddenly caught scent of something sweet, and his pupils shrunk.

”Shit!” He spun in the direction of the base and roared, enhancing his voice with mana.

”EVERYONE COVER YOUR NOSES!” But it was too late.

The coughs started almost immediately, coughs that soon turned to vomiting.

Xander watched as one by one, soldiers started dropping, ugly green veins bulging on their skin as they rolled around in agony.

He suddenly remembered one of the details concerning the ants he’d read. It was just a brief entry, but it talked about how the few times the ants came out of the catacombs, usually a stray worker, that when killed, they began to decompose remarkably quickly, the process starting just hours after death. So they usually got burned on the spot to avoid the smell.

However, they hadn’t been any details about such things resulting in the rapid development of any plagues or diseases, which meant on thing.

’The queens, they altered them before this to ensure this would happen.’ The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning.

The first wave of attacks hadn’t just been to gather information, it was to deliberately manufacture and spread a plague among Landor’s forces!

Biological warfare!

At that moment, Aubrey, whose brain instantly went into overdrive as soon as she noted the abnormality, started giving out orders.

’Xander! I switched my form of perception, there are harmful substances floating in the air. Virtually everyone at the frontline has already ingested some, you guys included, you can purge them with your mana, but...’ Her voice was grim.

’The ants clearly expected this, another attack is going to happen in a few minutes.’

Curtis, who was already making use of his ice diamond to neutralize the harmful air he’d inhaled exclaimed.

’A few minutes? But most of the soldiers are out of commission?! How are we meant to mount an effective defense?!?’ As he said this, he waved his hand and created a gale of cold wind that blew back the newly created airborne disease.

’We just do what we can. Curtis, follow me and freeze those corpses solid. Falael, shoot anything that comes through those tunnels.’ Xander hopped off the wall with Curtis in tow, his sword already unsheathed.

Using his speed, he began to run across the frontlines, summoning swords and stabbing them into the ground every dozen or so meters, and if one looked closely, they would see that tied to the handle of each one was a string.

At the same time, Curtis immediately got to work as he started freezing all the corpses he could reach. And soon, there was a wall of frozen corpses across the entire frontline.

Following that, he raised his wand and created a gale of cold wind which blew back the airborne particles, temporarily halting the advance of the disease.

Shortly after this ended, Xander stood in the very center of the frontlines and exhaled. He’d successfully purged the disease from his body, but he did not seem happy at all.

Instead, he raised his sword and waited.

Then came the buzzing and the rumbling.

’It’s starting.’ Aubrey said softly.